Doctor Who_ Combat Rock - Mick Lewis [50]
The officers’ quarters were quiet, the corridors empty. She tip-toed down the stone steps that led out to the courtyard, not quite knowing why she was tip-toeing, but sure it was the right thing to do regardless.
The soldiers had finished their drill. The courtyard was deserted.
She had a choice: the large gate that opened onto the market square beyond was directly ahead of her across the yard. That was quite tempting. Although the naked Papuls with their grotesque penis gourds made her feel nervous and affronted her decency, the exotic bazaars and all the colour and whirl of a busy alien market town attracted her.
Her other choice was to enter one of the two arches on the walls to either side of the courtyard. The one to her left was closest, but the dimness beyond did not look particularly inviting. The other was too far away to judge, but the bleakness of the facade above the doorway was distinctly offputting. The small glass-less windows looked too much like prison cells, but then so did the ones above the nearer arch.
That settled it then: out! Explore the town.
She had to pass the entrance of the nearest archway to get to the gate, and as she did so the smell hit her, like a down-draft of human misery. It smelled of blood and fear, and was well married to the barely audible moan of utter agony that chased after it a moment later.
Victoria flinched, and froze dramatically in the middle of the courtyard.
Her bowels contracted at the smell and the sound. Her eyes watered with unnatural fear. The smell faded, then came again: revolting, flesh and faeces, and everything she did not want to think about right now, or ever.
Go, a voice told her. Get out, see the sights, maybe hire some craft to search for your friends. This place was not good, despite all Agus’s assurances that the Indoni were fighting on the side of the angels.
She was going to listen to the voice, her voice, but then the cry came again, faint and awful, and that decided her.
She’d never been obedient, and she’d rarely been sensible; but Victoria could always be relied upon to get herself into a mess.
Because she was brave and, yes, noble, she did what she really knew she shouldn’t do.
She turned and entered the dark archway.
Wayun had reached the top of the ladder. From the guerrillas’
quarters it stretched up through a hatch-less opening in the ceiling, up through the next storey of the temple which was the provisions store, through another opening above and up to the Krallik’ s domain.
Wayun was now where few rebels had ever stood before.
Below him, the hole in the wicker floor leading to safety and reassurance. Ahead of him, a curtain stretching across the chamber in which he stood. There was nothing around him, no furniture, no windows: the only light slipping through chinks in the grass walls. The curtain was black and featureless, obviously stolen from some wealthy Indoni trader.
There was an absolute silence from behind the curtain.
Wayun’s fury was curdled by that silence, by the awful sense of wrongness about everything. Maybe the Krallik was not there? he thought hopefully, and that hope shamed him as he pictured his brother’s head hanging above the pink mist rising from the lake. Of course he was there. The simple antechamber he stood in was literally Wayun’s purgatory, before fate decided whether he should enter the hell of the Krallik’s domain, or retreat below and pick up the reigns of his disillusioned life.
Wherever the Krallik was, he brought hell with him.
Wayun knew that now. It had taken a long time, but he was certain at last. And now Wayun must enter hell too, and destroy whatever he found there.
Could he do it?
He had the bone knife in his hand, and of course it was sharp enough for the job. Hadn’t he spent all morning sharpening it?
Could he do it?
Nobody had ever spoken to the Krallik in his temple before. Instructions had always been relayed in the Krallik’s unique and frankly unnatural way. And if that was strange why had no-one ever commented upon it? Oh yes, it was